


I was a Cyberterrorist But Then I Transmigrated

by driftingstar



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! VRAINS, 人渣反派自救系统 - 墨香铜臭 | The Scum Villain's Self-Saving System - Mòxiāng Tóngxiù
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, Crack Treated Seriously, Gen, Humor, Wuxia, i put a lot of effort in this, im actually serious, no knowledge of scum villain is actually needed, this is actually a serious fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-10
Updated: 2019-06-10
Packaged: 2020-04-24 08:41:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,256
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19169716
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/driftingstar/pseuds/driftingstar
Summary: In the aftermath of his duel with Lightning (post ep 98), Ryoken awakens in a strange new universe with only one goal: to protect Fujiki Yusaku at any cost. Unfortunately, this may or may not involve demons, cultivators, and babysitting. A minor cross-over with Scum Villain's Self-Saving System, though knowledge of SV not necessarily needed.(In which Ryoken transmigrates into a scum villain shizun after episode 98 and there is no sea vast enough to hold my bottomless regrets. Illustration by the illustrious @kurapixel on twitter. Because I paid her $$$ to do it.)





	I was a Cyberterrorist But Then I Transmigrated

**Author's Note:**

> you: why this. there are literally a million other things you could have written. literally 1 million.
> 
> me, while sobbing: SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP I AM WELL AWARE OF THIS

_"I'll be going on ahead."_

 

Ryoken leaves with a smile on his face. There is no pain, only the quiet relief of his consciousness fragmenting. The shape of his thoughts becoming formless wisps of gossamer, drifting further and further apart until they scatter into the wind.

 

And then he gasps awake with static crackling in his ears.

 

 

> -rgy low…  [standby mode] initiated -

 

Ryoken pushes himself up, eyes uncharacteristically wide as they land on his surroundings. He is indoors; the endless stretch of flowers and artificial skyline is replaced by four bamboo walls. Pale light streams in from a gauze-covered window, bathing the humble room in a soft, white glow. There is little else within, aside from an old but well-cared for futon, a low table and wooden shelves piled with books.

 

He may be a genius, but it doesn’t take one to deduce that this is not where he is supposed to be.

 

_Playmaker. Ai._

 

A sense of urgency grips him; one that had been missing until right up to this moment. Presumably, if he is alive and existing with the awareness that he is himself, it should mean that Fujiki Yusaku has triumphed over Bohman. But this place is neither Link VRAINS nor the room he had entered the network from. A fact that is both illogical and worrying.

 

It is, he decides, as good a time as any to get up, so he wills his limbs to do so with all the grace of a turkey trying to operate heavy machinery. (Not very much.)  His fingers catch on something soft and elicit a stab of pain in his scalp when he tries to tug them free. Baffled, he grabs a handful of the material and pulls it closer to his face. Unexpectedly, it turns out to be hair. His own, in fact: long silken tresses cascading over his shoulders and pooling on the bedsheets. His body is also dressed in a thin, unfamiliar white robe.

 

Embarrassingly, his first thought is _"since when do Link VRAINS avatars grow hair”._  Obviously, his mind is still muddled from whatever happened between his disappearance and subsequent reappearance because the locks are clearly a snowy white and not the steel grey of his avatar.

 

His second thought is a burst of nervous realization at what this implies.

 

_What day is it?_

 

Ryoken clambers to his feet, seized by over-powering desperation to ascertain his reality with his own eyes. The door bursts open, flying off its hinges from the barest brush of his hands but he pays it no mind as he is too busy shielding his vision from the sunlight. But the more his eyes adjust, the greater the heights his confusion. He is standing on a pavilion, overlooking a neat stone garden with a neat path of white cobblestones leading out to a lush forest of bamboo. The air is sweet and filled with the distant babbling of brooks and whimsical birdsong. The scenery around him is beautiful and picturesque and he is very clearly no longer in Den City.

 

He blinks slowly, rubbing his eyes as a bout of vertigo threatens to overcome him.

 

Is… this a kidnapping?

 

He takes another disbelieving step and nearly topples over when a shriek cuts through the serenity of his surroundings.

 

_“Ryoken-sama!”_

 

His head snaps up, eyes widening with a painful kind of hope.

 

"Spectre!"

 

And indeed, the frantic figure rushing up the path towards him could be no one else.

 

Blue eyes filled with a familiar mix of delight and worry, his long, half-bound hair fanning out behind him, bouncing with every hurried step - is he also wearing robes? White silk, embroidered with patterns of gold, falling leaves.

 

"Spectre, your hair-"

 

"You are finally awake!" Spectre cuts him off before he can finish, seizing both his hands in a desperate grip. And then he immediately starts to herd him back inside.

 

"Spectre, what-"

 

"You should not be walking around yet!" Spectre declares, his face strangely red and vaguely mortified. "E-Especially when your meridians are still weak and  _definitely not in your inner robes where the students can see you!!_ "

 

Bemused, Ryoken allows the manhandling and finds himself all but shoved back into the bamboo house and carefully settled back on the futon with the covers tucked in.

 

Perhaps he had been taken to some kind of meditation retreat - a quiet, tranquil place to rest and recover from whatever had happened to him. This place, teeming with nature and greenery, seems very much in line with what he knows Spectre enjoys.

 

It is - _so good to see Spectre alive and well_. Ryoken's breath hitches slightly, a faint tremor passes through his hands at the sudden burst of emotion accompanied by the memory of Spectre's body shattering into golden fractals. But this also brings up another pressing question. "Spectre, what happened? Where is Fujiki Yusaku?"

 

The hands that had been fluffing his pillow suddenly still and something cold drops into the pit of his stomach. Ryoken claws his way back out of his blanket cocoon, fighting to see Spectre's expression. It couldn't be. Playmaker couldn't--

 

"What about Homura Takeru? Zaizen Aoi?"

 

Finally, Ryoken struggles free of his sheets and whirls around to meet his old friend's gaze, only to see -

 

Utter confusion.

 

"I assume Homura Takeru and Zaizen Aoi would be on their own Peaks,” Spectre says slowly and making absolutely no sense. All the while looking at Ryoken like he had sprouted several pairs of tentacles. “But I have never heard of any Fujiki Yusaku.”

  


* * *

  


Ryoken is not panicking.

 

He hasn’t panicked ever since that day ten years ago when he had snuck into his father’s laboratory and found Fujiki Yusaku, starved and weak and crying into the floor of a cell.

 

Unlike back then, he has perfect control of his faculties. It was with an impeccable calm that he deflected Spectre’s worried inquiries of his well-being, citing exhaustion as his excuse to send him away.

 

It wasn’t entirely a lie; Ryoken is indeed exhausted. The mental fatigue of dueling Lightning, the phantom impression of pain in his false body… all of it is taking its toll, regardless of how long his apparent body has been asleep. His surroundings aside, Ryoken cannot find any peace, not when he knows that something must be wrong. The texture of his clothing, the new weight attached to his scalp, the micro-expressions on Spectre’s face… everything was rendered in perfect clarity and yet, Ryoken cannot accept this as his reality. There are too many inconsistencies, too many dissonances with the most glaring issue that there cannot be a reality where Spectre does not know who Fujiki Yusaku is.

 

The only plausible explanations that Ryoken can come up with on such short notice is that he must either be trapped in a hyperrealistic dream (a nightmare) or more likely and more concerning, that Spectre had suffered some kind of damage from having his consciousness data extracted.

 

But the only thing he does know with certainty is that he will not find his answers in the hole that he is wearing into the floorboards with his pacing.

 

Ryoken lets out a sigh that is thankfully only audible to himself as he prepares himself to face the unenviable task of leaving the relative safety of the bamboo house to brave whatever laid madness beyond. Before that, he will first tackle the challenge of dressing more appropriately, recalling the embarrassed and scandalized expression that his friend had sported when he had caught sight of him earlier. Then again, the robe he has on is somewhat sheer, crafted more for comfort than for receiving polite company.

 

Luckily, the bamboo house is not very large which means he locates the wardrobe in short order. He decides on a set of heavier silks in a similar color scheme that Revolver had been partial to: mostly white with trimmings of pale green and gold. After a few false starts, he dons the unfamiliar clothing more or less neatly, hair pulled into a loose braid (thanks to his extensive experience in weaving flower crowns as a child). He will have it cut at the first opportunity; the extra weight is noticeable and not in a good way.

 

He frowns at his reflection critically as he tries to smooth the non-existent wrinkles from his robes, more out of habit than any real need. Dressed like this, he can hardly recognize himself. For ten years, he had spent more of his time in virtual reality than out of it. A small, humble hut surrounded by nature is about as far removed from normal as it can get. But there used to be a time when that hadn’t been normal either. A quiet, idyllic time where he knew nothing of the world’s darkness and found beauty in simple things. White sands sparkling in the summer, a soft breeze sweetened with the scent of wisteria, a warm sunset giving away to a canopy of glittering stars. With his decade-long crusade against the Ignis, or rather, Lightning finally completed, it appears that the dam he had constructed around his memories has burst, flooding him with nostalgia for what once was and will never be again.

 

He lets out another sigh, recognizing that he is, in fact, stalling. But the sooner he leaves this place, the sooner he can figure out what happened to Playmaker.

  


* * *

  


He walks for an inordinately long time without running into anyone; Spectre must have taken his request for solitude with seriousness and he may have done too good a job at clearing out the area for Ryoken soon finds himself tiring - mentally, at least. For a body that could have been unconscious for months upwards to _years_ , his muscles show none of the expected signs of atrophy. The disconnect between his tranquil surroundings and his tumultuous state of mind only serves to aggravate him. The more he walks, the more pressing his questions become. Exactly what is this place? And why has Spectre brought him here?

 

He indulges in what is slowly becoming a new habit: sighing. It is just his luck that the only one who can answer his questions is inconveniently nowhere to be found, forcing him to endure the company of his own thoughts. Although Ryoken would normally consider himself a solitary creature, he would prefer anyone over his own melancholic company right now.

 

Fortunately, before Ryoken can lose his tenuous grip on his sanity, the forest finally opens up to a plateau with rolling green hills, dotted by a modest collection of raised bamboo houses, woven together with stone footpaths. Further feeding into his suspicions that Spectre must have lost it and dragged his comatose body up into the mountains. He walks briskly, through what felt a lot like a historical reenactment of a Tokugawa period ghost town, considering there doesn't seem to be a living soul in sight. Really, where is Spectre when you need him?

 

Ryoken makes it about halfway through the near silent village when he spies movement in his peripherals. He automatically flattens himself against a wall in what was probably an unnecessary show of caution, especially considering that the whole purpose of his trip had been to find someone he could speak to. But just as he is about to detach himself from his hiding place, he picks up an indistinct hush of aggravated voices. A small unkempt shed that had escaped his notice earlier opens with a harsh crack, the sound loud and ugly against the backdrop of gentle birdsong.

 

There is a flurry of movement and Ryoken spots about seven to eight small silhouettes dashing out. They linger around the door long enough to bolt it shut and shout something angry back through the wood. From his vantage point, he can make out small, round faces twisted into sneers.

 

Children?

 

His first visceral reaction was to grimace as he had never enjoyed the company of the little creatures, with their sticky little hands and drooling mouths. Or the way they used to pull his hair and trample his sandcastles.

 

_Why were there so many of them? And what were they all doing in that shed?_

 

Ryoken's brows furrow as he watches the little hellions work together to bolt the gate shut. An increasing feeling of wrongness settles into the pit of his stomach. The wrongness grows exponentially when the door shakes violently like something is trying to get out.

 

Grimly, he makes his decision. After all, he is a healthy 18-year-old cyberterrorist who certainly is not intimidated by a group of milk-toothed children. He steps out from his hiding place, robes fanning out somewhat intimidatingly behind him. "What is it that you think you are doing?" he asks, in the faux pleasant way he reserved for mocking his enemies. There is something immensely satisfying in the way the little monsters jump and whirl around like the devil was on their heels.

 

But his short-lived satisfaction swiftly turns into confusion when the tallest boy suddenly throws himself on his knees with a fearful cry of, "Sh-Shizun!!"

 

_Whomst_ , Ryoken thinks to himself. Outwardly, he straightens up to his full, impressive (when compared to a group of terrified 12 yos) height. He'll file away the disconcerting fact that the little monsters appear to recognize him to peruse later, but for now, there are far more pressing matters.

 

"That doesn't sound like an explanation," Ryoken presses on mercilessly, his eyes narrowed into slivers of blue ice. As if on cue, the rest of them throw themselves at his feet to join the first, a litany of excuses pouring from their mouths.

 

"That filthy mongrel was besmirching the honor of our peak!"

 

"We disciples were just teaching it a lesson!"

 

"We beg Shizun for clemency!!"

 

Ryoken's frown deepens as an unpleasant picture begins to piece itself together. He will make sure he has harsh words with whoever is in charge of disciplining these unruly creatures. "Enough," he cuts them short, if only for the sake of his growing migraine. "I will see that you face the consequences for your actions. Now get out of my sight." There is a mad scramble among the children to be the first do exactly that and Ryoken is left standing alone.

 

The pounding from the shed had stopped, leaving an ominous kind of silence. He strides towards it grimly, bracing himself as scenarios race through his mind. He is possibly dealing with a child or a small animal, scared and possibly injured. Schooling his scowl into what is hopefully a gentle, non-threatening expression, Ryoken rips the lock from the door and nudges it open.

 

At first glance, he mistakenly thinks the shed is empty aside from a small bundle of cloth in the corner. It isn’t until he sees it move that he understands that he is looking at the shape of a child; thin, bruised limbs, a shock of dark, messy hair. His stomach turns unpleasantly the child visibly cringes away from him, curling inward as if to make themselves a smaller target. There is no limit to how cruel humans can be.

 

“It’s alright. You are safe now,” he says, projecting as much warmth and reassurance as he can muster as he approaches, keeping his footsteps slow and deliberate, the way one would approach a wounded animal. He does his best to keep his posture non-threatening, something he admittedly does not have a lot of practice in, judging from the way the child continues to hesitate.

 

Ryoken tries again, "Can you stand?"

 

The child finally moves, lifting his little head just enough to reveal dull green eyes.

 

_Fujiki Yusaku's eyes._

 

Ryoken chokes on his next words, feeling like he had been punched repeatedly in the gut as decade-old memories of another green-eyed child overlap with the present. The logical part of his mind screams that it is impossible. The rest of his mind is just screaming.

 

The Fujiki Yusaku he knows is sixteen years old - his last memory of him was against a backdrop of swirling petals, steadfast and noble as Ryoken entrusted his last wishes to him. He had grown strong and kind, casting away the shadows of his own suffering to become the best of them all. This Fujiki Yusaku looks even smaller than he did in his memories. His clothing is torn and filthy, hanging loosely off a shivering frame. Dark rings of bruises visible even beneath the dirt smeared on his face.

 

It was like Ryoken had been transported back in time, with dark wooden walls replacing white. He forgets how to speak, choked by the same weight of responsibility he had felt back then. His composure cracks at the sight of those eyes now clouded over with pain and mistrust, completely falling apart when he watches him struggle to get to his tiny feet.

 

Without thinking, he rushes forward to steady him, drawing the child who may or may not be Fujiki Yusaku into his arms.

 

A new hypothesis is necessary, Ryoken thinks with a minor touch of hysteria while he absently strokes the unruly blue head pressed against his chest. Bohman must have won after all and now they are all trapped in a virtual lotus eater machine. It would explain Playmaker’s regression to a childlike state and Spectre’s missing memories.

 

It is either that or he must have woken up in some kind of parallel universe that was coincidentally inhabited by doppelgangers of all the people he knows.  But that would not explain why Spectre has long hair and why Playmaker isn't tall enough to order a hotdog. Ryoken takes a steadying breath. The most likely explanation is that this child is just a look-alike. Yes, that must be it. He decides to test his hypothesis.

 

"Fujiki Yusaku," he calls out gently and his last hopes immediately dashed when those big green eyes swivel up to regard him with confusion and surprise. A new hypothesis it is, then. But before that, he has to get this child cleaned up and patched up. And fed, he determines after another critical once over.

 

He clears his throat, realizing that the child had been waiting for him to speak. "Let's continue this discussion elsewhere," he says because it sounds like a reasonable thing to say, not that they were having anything like an actual conversation.

 

He moves to stand and nearly gestures for the child to follow him, but then he remembers the ugly bruises covering his legs and thinks better of it, scooping the boy up instead, with one arm tucked under his knees and the other securely against his back. Little Yusaku lets out a startled noise and goes stiff but Ryoken decides to take his lack of struggling as a positive sign.

 

Playmaker had been injured too, he recalls as his hold unconsciously tightens. Perhaps there is some kind of cosmic law in the universe that states that Fujiki Yusaku must suffer for absolutely no fault of his own.

 

No, Ryoken thinks humorlessly as he starts to retrace his steps, clearly, the only wrong Yusaku committed was being unfortunate enough to encounter him.

  


* * *

  


The trip back was made in silence because Ryoken was well on his way to three-fifths of a mental breakdown while the miniature Playmaker dozed off against his shoulder.  The latter turned out to be a blessing in disguise because Ryoken was then able to lose his mind in relative privacy after settling the child in his bed. This process involved a lot of staring blankly at walls and frantic mumbling while pacing and at one point, he had accidentally knocked over a vase in frustration.

 

Fortunately, he is more or less able to piece back together his fractured psyche the same way he pieces back the fractured ceramic: by sweeping the shards to the side and ignoring them in favor of concentrating on more important things. To start with, he will need water and clean bandages, as well as some kind of sustenance suitable for a small, undernourished child.

 

Less fortunately, he hasn't the faintest idea where he would even begin to procure such items. After a long, fruitless search of the house, he eventually resorts to rushing back down the path in order to intimidate a few passing hellions into providing him with supplies. Later, he will have Spectre explain things to the absent manager who is supposedly in charge of this so-called peak.

 

But for now, he settles for getting little Playmaker to look less like a discarded pile of rags and more like the adorable child he knew him to be. In truth, he doesn't have a concrete idea of now to get there since the downside to spending the majority of his time in virtual reality is that he has very little experience with patching up non-virtual injuries. ("An AI ate your arm? No problem, I'll just write you a new one.") Luckily, as a genius cyberterrorist, Ryoken is nothing if not resourceful and he fully intends to make up for this shortcoming with effort.

 

He nudges Playmaker with caution and calls for him to wake up. Then he nudges him again and repeats the motion several times more, feeling more like a horrible human being with every subsequent nudge. Finally, Playmaker decides to take pity on him and starts to stir, blinking sluggishly and rubbing his face against the pillow in a way very much reminiscent of the small grey kitten he used to own. Adorable, a small voice in his heart cries out before it is mercilessly stifled since there are more pressing matters to attend to. Like how to address the fact that the child is now staring at him with wide eyes, his mouth open in a small, soundness 'o'.

 

"Welcome back to the land of the living," he says with a tiny trace of sarcasm that he deeply regrets about a second later when Playmaker's surprised expression starts to edge into panic. He takes a second to indulge in some good old-fashioned self-recrimination and self-loathing before he attempts to rectify his folly by placing a gentle hand on top of Playmaker's tiny head. Against all odds, that seems to do the trick and the child visibly calms and returns to watching him with an intense focus that Ryoken has only seen in, well, the Playmaker that was tall enough to order a hotdog. He returns the stare as evenly as possible, mentally cycling through a long list of things he wants to ask him, starting with how much he remembers, why he had allowed himself to be beaten by snot-nosed brats, and most importantly, why he seems to have misplaced a decade of time.

 

"Sit up so I may dress your cuts," he says instead, defaulting back to his strategy of ignoring his problems until he is more mentally capable of dealing with them.

 

Tiny Playmaker obediently does as directed, sitting up and extending his arms with the same kind of implicit trust that regular Playmaker had shown in. In all honesty, it kind of makes his chest hurt. Regardless, he works methodically to administer an adequate level of first aid. If Playmaker is at all dissatisfied with his crooked bandages or overly loose dressings, he does not voice any complaints. Or voices anything at all (to the point that Ryoken begins to fret that he has an issue with his vocal cords). If anything, he keeps touching Ryoken’s mediocre work with an expression of quiet awe on his dirty face. Unable to stomach his rival looking so pitiful any longer, Ryoken immediately grabs another clean washcloth and wipes down his cheeks. If only so he would stop looking at him with such grateful eyes.

 

"I will bring you something to eat," Ryoken declares, rising to his feet. He turns to leave, only to be stopped by a tug of resistance against his overly wide sleeves. He looks down, and as expected, Fujiki Yusaku has attached himself to the end of it, green eyes shimmering with a film of unshed tears. Ryoken can relate because at the moment, he would also like to cry.

 

"Shizun," the tiny child says in a tinier voice, but there is nothing tiny about those big beseeching eyes.

 

_Whomst_ , Ryoken thinks to himself again but outwardly he plasters on what he hopes is a reassuring mien while he subtly tries to extricate himself from the grip. "What is it?"

 

Apparently, he hadn't been subtle enough because the child unsubtly curls his fingers deeper into his sleeve, a stubborn glint entering those increasingly wet eyes. "Shizun," he repeats without any further verbal elaboration but the message that he isn't likely to let go any time soon is received loud and clear.

 

Ryoken had been prepared to take full responsibility and atone for his crimes as a historical cyberterrorist but he had expected to serve his sentence out in an actual prison, and not be imprisoned by the hands of a small child. After a period of careful deliberation, Ryoken eventually concedes this impromptu tug of war to Playmaker and his unexpectedly powerful grip and sets off to the kitchens with a six-year-old Fujiki Yusaku dozing peacefully in his arms.

  
 

  

[credit [@kurapixel](https://twitter.com/kurapixel)]

 

 

* * *

 

 

It isn't until he hears the loud, monotonous ring of a mechanical voice that he realizes that caring for a small, sticky Playmaker will be the least of his many, many problems.

  


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